The Korean Central News Agency is often the world’s only window into the inner workings of North Korea. When international media reports that North Korea threatened the U.S. with “ruin” or called Donald Trump a “dotard,” they’re getting their info from KCNA dispatches.

The KCNA’s official website, kcna.kp, is prone to frequent glitches and shutdowns, but it is nevertheless a direct connection to the world’s most closed nation. “When you hit that website, you’re literally sending requests deep inside North Korean territory,” Frank Feinstein, an expert on North Korean web activity, told the National Post.

The National Post examined an entire year of KCNA’s English-language dispatches. Below, a summary of the takeaways noted in 12 months’ worth of propaganda from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Everything in South Korea is a “puppet” It’s well known that North Korea views its southern neighbour as a puppet of the Americans. However, the KCNA isn’t content simply to use the moniker “puppet South Korea” from time to time. Absolutely every mention of a South Korean agency or representative must be appended with a descriptive “puppet.” There is a puppet army, a puppet navy, a puppet intelligence service and a puppet ministry of education. The streets are patrolled by puppet police, the skies crawl with puppet “air pirates” and the South Korean supreme court is a “a puppet judicial organ.”

Kim Jong-un is constantly photographed to look like he’s laughing There are three kinds of photos of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un published by the KCNA. There is the “patient teacher” photo, in which Kim is providing benevolent guidance to a part conference or the workers at a shoe factory. There are the “resolute Kim” photos, in which he is mourning at the bier of a dead comrade or laying a wreath at a memorial. Finally – and this is the most popular option – there are the photos in which Kim, and everyone around him, is laughing uproariously. They laugh during tours of apple orchards, they laugh at factory inspections and they definitely laugh at missile launches. It’s obviously not a coincidence, and Jong is likely trying to curry an image as a jovial father figure, much like the carefully cultivated image of his grandfather, North Korea’s eternal president Kim il-Sung. This is in sharp contrast to Kim Jong-il, who spent the last years of his life shuffling through inspections in an oversized winter coat and an expression of marked disinterest.

Frighteningly normal things are made national news items North Korean woman Pak Yong Hui got a dedicated article after she gave birth to her eighth child. So did the 60 sports fishermen who showed up to an angling contest at Pyongyang’s River Pothong. The KCNA also covered a local kimchi-making contest. These are stories so quotidian that that would barely make the sked of a penny saver in Canada. The most dreary interpretation of this bizarre editorial quirk is that, in the extreme deprivation of North Korea, these are legitimately major news items.

Imperial Japan will rise again North Korea’s hate hierarchy goes thusly: South Korea, United States, Japan. Korea (both North and South) has good reason to resent Japan. Imperial Japan annexed the Korean peninsula during the first half of the 20th century and kidnapped thousands of Korean women as sex slaves during the Second World War. But while many of Japan’s neighbours fault the country for not properly acknowledging its war guilt, only North Korea claims that Tokyo is simply biding its time until it can reboot its conquest of Asia. “Now that it is crystal clear to all that Japan is pushing ahead with the reinvasion preparations,” read a KCNA column this week.

Kim Jong-un is here described as having ‘guided once again’ the launch of a Hwasong-12 missile.Korean Central News Agency

Childish name-calling is rampant Enemies of North Korea are rarely mentioned in KCNA dispatches without a passing insult. This is one of the only aspects of their writing in which propagandists can show creativity, so they take it very seriously. Impeached South Korean president Park Geun Hye is routinely called a “traitor,” and one story claimed her “mental age estimated to be that of teens.” South Korean minister of foreign affairs Kang Kyung-wha is a “woman confrontation maniac.” North Korea is harsh on every U.S. president, of course, but they’ve been hammering Donald Trump particularly hard lately. He’s a “living corpse,” a “hooligan,” a “lunatic,” the “trouble-maker of humanity” and, of course, a “mentally deranged dotard.”

Anything remotely bad in South Korea gets covered Naturally, KCNA never reports anything critical of North Korea. In all the stories surveyed by the National Post, the only indication that things weren’t entirely perfect in the DPRK were reports of floods in North Hamgyong Province and a worker injured on the job (although his health was restored immediately by the country’s “advantageous universal, free medical care system”). South Korea, by contrast, is given a daily parade of all its dirty laundry: Strikes, sex assaults, flu epidemics, political corruption and gun violence. “The south Korean puppet authorities have done nothing” for the refugees of a wildfire, read an early October story. When several South Korean mill workers were killed in an industrial explosion the KCNA wrote “this is a typical example of the pitiful situation of the south Korean workers exposed to the constant danger at insecure worksites.”

Kim Jong Un at the bier of Kang Ki Sop, North Korea’s former director of civil aviation.

North Korea really, really loves its nuclear bombs Modern nuclear-armed countries generally see their atomic arsenal as a necessary evil. Even Trump has said he wants to “de-nuke the world.” North Korea’s approach, by contrast, is much more akin to the nuclear boosterism of the Khruschev-era Soviet Union. The KCNA has written that “nuclear-tipped missiles are a “treasured sword of justice” making the DPRK a “world-famous military giant.” Hyping the fear of invasion has long been a tactic of North Korea’s governing class, and nuclear weapons are presented as a final guarantee of DPRK security. “Our nuclear weapons are a precious fruition borne out by the bloody struggle of our people to protect the destiny and sovereignty of the country from the U.S. imperialists’ nuclear threats,” the KCNA wrote recently.

The same basic column is published every single day Every editorial published by the KCNA follows several excruciatingly predictable themes: The Korean people are united, the forces of the DPRK are invincible and North Korea’s reckless enemies will all face ruin if they don’t obey the illustrious guidance of Kim Jong-un. A version of this column is published basically every day. The headlines change, of course. One day it might be “DPRK Sure to Win Final Victory.” The next it could be “Confrontation Maniacs are Doomed to Ruin.” But the general content is the same, and likely has been ever since the end of the Korean War.

Kim Jong-un pictured with various military and scientific heads after he ‘guided an intermediate-and-long range strategic ballistic rocket launching drill.’Korean Central News Agency

There are dozens of stories about floral baskets Every time a foreigner anywhere lays a bouquet of flowers in honour of the Kim family, it’s mentioned by the KCNA. Some UNICEF envoys left flowers beneath the giant statues of Kim il-Sung and Kim Jong-il. As did a delegation of the World Health Organization, some representatives of a Vietnamese newspaper and what was described as some “foreign crewmen” from a freighter. Left unsaid is that all visitors to North Korea don’t really have a choice on whether to lay flowers in tribute to the Kims. Tourists, in fact, are required to present repeated flower tributes during their closely coordinated visits. And as the tragic example of U.S. tourist Otto Warmbier shows, even minor slipups can be fatal in the DPRK.

In this October photo, Kim Jong Un is described as giving ‘field guidance’ to the Ryuwon Footwear Factory.Korean Central News Agency

They appear to be fine with Britain It’s pretty routine that KCNA will publish something decrying the United States as a scheming “den of evils” that needs to be “tamed with fire.” But this treatment is strangely not extended to the United States’ closest ally. In fact, in the period surveyed by the National Post, KCNA mentions of the U.K. government was generally positive. Queen Elizabeth II was wished “good health and happiness” on her birthday and DPRK premier Pak Pong Ju twice sent a “sent a message of sympathy” to U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May in the wake of terrorist attacks.

Literally any foreign praise is celebratedIrkutskblogspot.ru is as shady as websites get. Obviously cobbled together in a matter of minutes, the only content (aside from default text left over from the website template) is a badly formatted speech by Kim Jong-un. But to the KCNA, this warranted celebration of “Kim Jong Un’s Work Posted on Russian Website.” Any blog post, pamphlet or internet comment is similarly feted, as is any meeting of a fringe political party that. A handful of aging Irish Marxists met in a Dublin coffee shop to discuss the North Korean philosophy of Juche? Expect the KCNA to soon trumpet the Irish “seminars” praising the wisdom of Kim Jong-un.

Kim Jong-un seen after he ‘guided a test-fire of ballistic rocket equipped with precision guidance system.’Korean Central News Agency

Senior citizens are regularly informed that their life was garbage before Kim il-Sung Seven North Korean citizens, all women, had their 100th birthdays noted by the KCNA. It’s worth noting this is a dismally low number of centenarians in a country of 24 million. According to a recent study, South Korea’s dramatically higher life expectancy means that their rate of centenarians is 14 times higher than the North. Hundredth birthday announcements also follow a near-identical script of framing the first years of the subject’s life as having existed in a “ruined nation” of constant suffering. “It was not until President Kim Il Sung liberated the country that she enjoyed a worthy life as a human being,” wrote the KCNA of centenarian Ri Hwak Sil.

Kim Jong-un providing ‘field guidance’ at an under-construction Pyongyang street. He urged it to be completed soon in order to display the ‘mightiness and national power of Juche Korea.’ Oddly, he appears to be smoking, in spite of the DPRK’s official anti-smoking policy. Korean Central News Agency

Common North Korean citizens are almost never mentioned by name Aside from the Kim family and select top officials, common citizens are virtually never mentioned by name in KCNA reports, and they’re certainly never quoted. The only exception are occasional articles in which common citizens are canvassed to express their burning hatred for the enemies of the DPRK. “We, farmers, are unanimous in our determination to mangle them and bury them in a manure sink,” was farmer Han Kyong Ae’s opinion of then-South Korean president Park Geun-hye. Han then added that she would defend the dignity of socialism by being “victorious in the on-going campaign for preventing drought damage and bring in rich harvest.”

Communism is boring “True enough, the country is calm. Calm as a morgue or a grave, would you not say?” the famed dissident Vaclav Havel famously said of Communist Cezchoslovakia. Aside from the famines, the purges, the gulags and the general suppression of human dignity, there is one oft-overlooked evil of Communism: It’s unbelievably boring. The music is bad, the speeches are interminable and the nightlife is monstrous. This phenomenon is best illustrated on the rare occasion that the KCNA attempts to highlight a leisure activity. The Ministry of Railways put on a juggling show that left a “favorable impression upon audience for its high ideological and artistic value.” The armed forces, in turn, kicked back and held a movie night; a screening of “The Combined Fire Demonstration of the Services of the Korean People’s Army Supervised by Respected Supreme Leader Comrade Kim Jong Un in Celebration of the 85th Anniversary of the Heroic KPA”.